Joe Biden let the Pentagon run gender experiments on the military for four years.
Now a pair of Obama and Clinton judges think they outrank the Commander in Chief.
And Donald Trump just asked the Supreme Court to end the transgender military circus once and for all.
The Judges Who Think They Command the Military
Two Democrat-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit – one picked by Obama, one by Clinton – ruled in June that Pete Hegseth can’t discharge the transgender troops currently serving under an injunction.
That ruling declared the Hegseth policy was likely driven by “hostility” rather than military necessity.
The Trump-appointed dissenter on that same panel said it plainly: the Constitution assigns authority over military service to Congress and the Commander in Chief – not to federal judges.
The Trump-appointed judge was right.
Solicitor General John Sauer called the majority ruling “gravely erroneous” and filed a petition for certiorari on August 28.
He argued the policy doesn’t discriminate against transgender people – it disqualifies individuals with gender dysphoria, a medical condition that affects deployability and readiness.
The government isn’t required to build a perfect case when it comes to military standards. It only has to show a reasonable connection to readiness – and that bar is obvious.
Why SCOTUS Already Answered This Once
This isn’t new territory for the justices.
In May 2025, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority already paused a separate injunction – a Washington state judge’s order blocking the broader ban across the entire military.
That ruling cleared the way for the Pentagon to implement the policy and begin separating trans-identifying service members who hadn’t voluntarily left.
The D.C. Circuit’s June 2026 ruling in Talbott v. United States reopened a hole the Supreme Court had already sealed – protecting a group of individual plaintiffs from discharge while their case heads toward a January 2027 trial.
Hellbound and Down 